The present invention is concerned to a micromanipulator which performs fine adjustment of linear displacement to attain high-accuracy positioning utilizing a differential lever.
Differential levers have so far been well known in which any one of feed screws is turned by supporting both ends of a lever by means of a pair of feed screws, whereby said lever undergoes angular displacement with the point contacting to said other stationary feed screw as a fulcrum, so that the advancing length of each part of the lever is proportional to the distance from each fulcrum, and in which if the point of application is set to a position at which the axis distance of said pair of feed screws in divided to 10:1, the feed lengths of a feed screw near to the point of application and a feed screw remote from the point of application are transformed differentially at a ratio of 10 for the former and 1 for the latter as said point of application.
The first object of the present invention is to provide a micromanipulator which can attain reliable and fine adjustment, that is suited for aligning the cores of ends of optical fibers that require very fine positioning of the accuracy order of, for example, 0.1 to 0.2 microns, by utilizing the principle of the aforementioned differential lever.
The second object of the present invention is to provide a micromanipulator of a small and compact size by enclosing major portions of the mechanism in a housing to shut off the mechanism from the external atmosphere, in order to prevent the precision from being deteriorated by the infiltration of dirt and dust.
The third object of the present invention is to provide a micromanipulator which requires very easy handling operation and which can attain quick positioning, by employing micrometer heads of the same shape and same size for the two dissimilar feed mechanisms which perform coarse adjustment and fine adjustment to attain good exchangeability and balancing in appearance as well as to attain quick intertransfer change over between coarse adjustment and fine adjustment at any desired moment, and in particular, to attain quick change over from an extremely inclined position to fine adjustment even where the differential lever is extremely inclined to perform long-distance coarse displacement, thereby keeping always constant magnification and without producing any errors.
The fourth object of the present invention is to provide a micromanipulator of a small size, simple construction and cheap cost, that is capable of two dissimilar coarse and fine adjustments by way of a common and single guide mechanism.
The fifth object of the present invention is to provide a micromanipulator being capable of variable magnification between both coarse and fine displacements.
The sixth object of the present invention is to provide a micromanipulator which can attain reliable and quick positioning by providing means to prevent erroneous operation or confusion that may result from the employment of feed mechanisms of the same shape and same size for performing coarse adjustment and fine adjustment.